CHAPTER XIX
The old lampshade-maker of the Neanderstrasse was not a little astonished when her former lodger, whom she had always admired as a smartly-turned-out grand lady, came one day in a badly fitting alpaca coat and skirt, and a sailor hat with a grass-green ribbon round it, and asked to be taken in. Last year's young lady occupant of the best room having recently married, however, she was glad to let it again to Lilly.
Thus it happened that Frau Laue's fiery crimson plush upholstery once more played a part in her life. The pictures of famous actors smiled down on her patronisingly from the walls, and she was reminded of the connection between cleanliness of person and purity of conscience as she made her toilette.
Konrad, in touching concern for her appearance, drew all the money that he had saved out of the bank--about five hundred marks altogether--and had purchased her a wardrobe at the draper's, for she could not go out and shop for herself in the costume she had worn the night that she came to his rooms. He had been persuaded by the shopgirls to buy the most ridiculous things. She would have died of laughing if he hadn't laid out a great deal of his money on them.
Dressed in the shoddy apparel, she felt she was masquerading, and not for the world would she now have been seen in the streets.
Frau Laue shook her head doubtfully.
"Four years ago you left me with court-dresses, bracelets, and brooches, and all sorts of lovely things, and now you are come back in these rags! That doesn't seem to me to be fitting to your career, Lilly dear."
Neither did Konrad find favour in the old lady's eyes.
"He's too young for you," she said, "and not enough of a swell. He may have high ideals, and be sentimental, otherwise he wouldn't see anything in you; but I tell you all that high-flown rubbish means sorrow."
To Lilly this chatter was intensely objectionable. But as she had nothing to do all day, she sat down with Frau Laue, as had been her wont of old, and helped her tap and press her dried flowers. And often it seemed as if she had never been away.
The first day of her absence she had written to Adele--without giving her address, of course--and instructed her not to be concerned about her, but to continue her duties at the flat till Herr Dehnicke came back.
It was more difficult to write a letter of farewell to Richard. She made no allusion to her engagement, which was to be kept secret for the present, and gave as the sole motive of her flight an ardent desire to live a new life. She again expressed herself unwilling to stand in the way of his matrimonial prospects, and ended with heartfelt cordiality, which robbed the separation of every sort of bitterness. On reading the letter over, she experienced a genuine pang of parting emotion, of which she was a little ashamed.
Days went by. The new life that for years had been the subject of her fondest dreams had begun, and under auspices happier than any her imagination had ever dared to depict.
At the side of the man she loved, whom but a few days ago it would have seemed arrogance and sacrilege to have thought of possessing, she was to enter again the society from which she had been banned--rescued, purified, regenerate.
Who could have believed it possible? Yet, for all that, it required an effort to realise and appreciate this unheard-of happiness. The more she said to herself that this was a period of transition that would soon be over, the more she felt the sordid wretchedness of the old quarters that had become so strange to her. The frowsy atmosphere, the spiritual flatness, the want of decent clothes and money, the bad food and service, all weighed on her spirit and left the impression that instead of ascending to honour and position she had on the contrary sunk suddenly from affluence and splendour into a degraded poverty. No matter how much she scolded herself for this ungracious mood, it remained with her and would not budge. And she could not explain why it should be so. Five years ago, when she had really come down from high places, a spoilt child of fortune, petted and used to every luxury and attention, she had hardly suffered at all from the dreary squalor of her surroundings; and, though without any prospects to speak of, she could still hope. But now, when the idle pleasures of a frivolous existence lay behind her, and she had been happily drawn out of the slough, when her beloved was at her side, ready to fling open the doors for her to enter into a kingdom of undreamed-of joy, she nearly choked among the red plush furniture, vexed her soul about trifles, and pined for a bathroom and a hairdresser's services.
Some change had come over her during these years, but what it was, though she racked her brains in thinking about it, she could not discover.
In the midst of these trials, her anxiety with regard to Konrad gave her no peace. She was subject to violent heart-beatings at the mere thought of him. Her conscience perpetually stabbed her. She longed for expiation, reproached herself, and in her secret soul reproached him too.
She dared no longer think of him with the rapture of desire as formerly, yet she was always on the lookout for a message or letter from him. If he did write, it was never enough to please her, but if he was silent she grumbled and fretted, although she knew that he had scarcely a moment to call his own during the day, and was drudging harder than he had ever done for her sake.
Between eight and nine in the evening he arrived, laden with books and papers. He had manuscripts to read, proofs to go through, and letters to answer. He scarcely gave himself time to eat, and while he swallowed a few mouthfuls, troubled thoughts of things that he had forgotten to do during the day constantly occurred to his over-taxed mind.
Hours devoted to amorous dalliance were out of the question. Often indeed he fell asleep in a corner of the sofa in the middle of his work. Then Lilly could contemplate at her leisure the ravages his strenuous life had made on him. He looked haggard and worn, his clothes were neglected, and the velvety blue sheen of his cheeks, in which she had taken such delight, had given place to pimples and a stubbly growth of hair.
She would have given anything to know what he was really thinking about her at the bottom of his soul, but she could extract nothing from him. Dumbly he gazed before him with burning eyes, his lips so tightly compressed that the edge of a razor could not have been inserted between them. She had no grounds for doubting him, for she knew that all his energies were concentrated on preparing for their joint future.
The post of professor of German in a college in Buenos Ayres was vacant, also a similar post in Caracas, and on the other side of the herring-pond he could easily get employment on any university staff. All that was necessary was a few testimonials from celebrated professors.
It was only in the contingency of his uncle disapproving of his marriage and cutting him off that he laid these plans. If the old man said "Yes," there would be ample means to set up housekeeping anywhere they liked, and in surroundings most congenial for the precious work.
Konrad had at once announced his engagement to his uncle, and given a heart-moving account of Lilly's past. He did not conceal that there had been stains on it, but he emphasised the more her fine qualities, her inner purity, her grandeur of soul, her gifts of mind, the wealth of her intellectual interests.
He read her an extract from a copy of the letter after he had despatched it, sounding like the manifesto of a social revolution:
"I know you are, thank God, as I am, far above the narrow Philistine conventions of society, the uncharitable social standards, the Pharisaism that entitles itself to be the guardian of public morals and would sacrifice all aspirations, freedom of conduct, and high living to the fetish of family-life bondage. You have travelled in all parts of the world and learned how mutable are the laws of morality everywhere, how hollow the sham of pretending to regard each as the divinely ordained dogma, and how hypocritical the sly methods by which men wriggle out of them. You know that in the realm of ethics there is one thing alone that commands unconditionally a reverence and esteem, and that is the will to kallokagathia, to that mode of living in which the super-men of all times combined the Good and Beautiful. Yes, in her aspirations and her troubles, she has personified the good and beautiful for me, and has brought into my life imperial rights and the dawn of morning's glory."
Could anything be more splendidly and touchingly put? Who could be so crassly dull and stupid as to resist the power of such language? And with this she consoled him when he was weighed down with a feeling of depression about the uncertainty of their immediate future.
A week passed before the answer came, the longed-for answer that meant joy or despair to two human beings.
"My dear Boy,
"I have no idea what kallokagathia means, and other foreign words of the kind. It is half a century since I ran away from school, but, all the same, I flatter myself that I have a keen eye for faces, and can take a man's measure pretty accurately, whether it's striking a bargain on the Yoshiwara, on the Stock Exchange, or at a game of baccarat. Nevertheless, this insight did not stand in the way of my being fleeced and of making a fool of myself about women. My life represents a long sequence of such blunders. Once I wanted to bring home a young Circassian because her eyebrows grew prettily; another time I nearly married a little Musme, because she understood how to massage my feet. I won't recount how many times I wanted to act the part of saviour of souls, for everyone goes through that phase. Fortunately, the patron divinity of old rips and old bachelors--with your wide classical learning you may be able to tell me who he is--has hitherto had the grace to save me from putting any plans into execution. Your case, however, appears on the surface to be essentially different. If, as you relate, your sweetheart is a pattern with every attribute of virtue--life is full of surprises and if she doesn't pose as a repentant magdalen, then I shall with the greatest enjoyment give respectability, which I have detested all my life, a slap in the face by bestowing on you my hearty blessing. But if by any chance your love affair bears a family likeness to my own tender recollections, you must excuse me if I back out of any responsibility with regard to what you call your future and break off any relations with you. The best plan I can think of is to come to Berlin to-morrow, and to ask you and your future bride to keep an evening free for your old uncle. As I don't know as yet the best place to dine at, I will fix a rendezvous later. Till then,
"Your affectionate
"Uncle Rennschmidt."
For the first time during these sad days, Lilly saw Konrad's face relax into a smile.
"If that is his attitude," he said, "there is nothing to fear. One glance at you and his doubts will be dissipated; besides, who in the world could possibly resist you? You have only to make yourself a little nice to him and he will be your slave."
But Lilly cherished secret misgivings.
If only she had her old extensive wardrobe to select from, she might, with great care, have made herself as presentable as she could wish in his uncle's eyes; but in either of these two ready-made little frocks--which only by pinning she could make fit her--without ornaments and the hundred and one etceteras that contribute to a perfect ensemble, how was she to achieve the conquest of the old connoisseur of women?
"I am afraid I shall have to put you to the expense of an evening dress," she said timidly.
He was delighted at the idea. Anything she wanted she must have, of course. A hat with feathers, a lace scarf ... like those he had seen her in. And he handed out two hundred and sixty marks, all that he had left, for her purchases. Poor dear boy! what did he know of the costliness of chic in the world of fashion?
When he was gone she thought it over. While she was trying to devise plans of getting herself up decently out of the means at her disposal, there were dozens of lovely dresses hanging in the cupboards of her old flat, dresses that he had never seen in his life, for she had never been escorted by him to any party. And the lace scarf, which had cost a fortune, was there too, and God only knew what besides. She dared hardly trust herself to think of all these wasted treasures.
With all her might she resisted the temptation. She had given him her word of honour, and, whoever else she might deceive, she could not deceive Konrad. So she decided to go on a shopping expedition the next morning. There might be something she could pick up in stock at Wertheim's or Gerson's that would prove a bargain. She was well known in the shops, and though never extravagant, was noted for always choosing the very best materials. What astonishment would be depicted on the faces of the saleswomen when they beheld her in her present cheap, shoddy clothes!
No; it would be too painful an ordeal. She couldn't go through it. Yet think and think it over as she did by the hour, nothing could prevent her thoughts travelling back to the wardrobes where her finery reposed, silently offering her an exquisite choice. Nowhere could she find a loophole by which she could evade her promise, nowhere an excuse for the crime of breaking it. In spite of all this wrestling with herself, the night passed in happy dreams, for the sun of hope had risen once more. And, as usual, when Lilly's sleep was refreshing and profound, she felt her senses lapped in familiar melodies. The "Moonlight Sonata" stole on her, and Grieg's "Ung Birken," and, with the Rhine maidens' motif out of "The Ring," "The Song of Songs."
As she lay half awake the aria still rang in her ears: "Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field."
And then, in sudden terror, she started up in bed crying out, "The Song of Songs!" The score--her precious roll of music--her heritage--where was it?
In a drawer of the escritoire in the corner drawing-room--buried, forgotten.
She had never given it a single thought.
Now there was no longer any question of keeping her promise. If in that supreme hour she had kept her head, she would never have given it. She had been casting about for an excuse, and now here was more than an excuse, a justification. No pangs of conscience troubled her. This was a sacred cause, for which she must go through fire and water.
Before eight o'clock she was out of the house. The sun-drenched mist of the rosy August morning melted into a violet sky; from the yellowing poplars dropped sooty dew, and the electric trams hummed their secret storm-signals.
She mingled with the little crowd that gathered and melted again at the nearest stopping-station waiting for the car which was to take her west. Nervously she looked about her, fearful that Konrad might chance to come along the street; and when seated in the tramcar she screened her face with the morning paper that she had brought. Along the canal path she glided, under cover of the trees, like a hunted animal.
And so she came to the flat at last. The porter was sweeping the steps, as he did every morning, and greeted her with an exclamation of wonder and pleasure. The greengrocer whose stall was in the cellar gave her a roguish welcome, and his small fry, to whom she had sometimes given a bonbon, hung on to her skirts in jubilation. Altogether it felt like coming home.
Adele was still in bed. Why shouldn't she be? There was nothing for her to do.
When Lilly opened the door of her room she displayed unbounded delight. She even shed tears of satisfaction, and Lilly all at once realised what she was losing in her.
Everything shone brightly in the morning sunshine. The flowers had been watered. The bullfinch flapped his wings in greeting, and Peterle nearly broke the bars of his cage to scramble up on her shoulder. She scarcely knew whom to attend to first--out of sheer happiness and affection.
There were three letters and two telegrams on the salver. The letters were in Richard's handwriting; the telegrams were addressed to Adele, urgently demanding the address of her vanished mistress.
In the meantime her master had given up his courtship, and returned to Berlin. He had advertised in the papers, and came every day to see if there was any answer. He sat in his old place and drank his tea as usual, afterwards smoking cigarettes till it was time to go back to the office.
Had she mentioned Konrad? What did the gnädige Frau take her for? Adele hoped she understood better than that how to look after her mistress's interests. And now the best thing for the gnädige Frau to do was to come back and act just as if nothing at all had happened. That is what her former ladies had always done.
Lilly asked her to fetch down the smaller of her two leather trunks from the attic, explaining that she wished to take away with her a few things which had belonged to her before. As Adele sullenly obeyed, Lilly collected Konrad's letters from their secret hiding-place, then ran to her big wardrobe, snatched the dresses from the pegs, and piled them on the bed to choose what she would take.
It was now that she thought of "The Song of Songs." She went down on her knees before the escritoire. The roll of music, which had been lying for years at the back of the bottom drawer neglected and forlorn, had assumed a different aspect. The elastic band that held the sheets together had become slack and sticky, and fell to pieces when Lilly touched it: The crumpled sheets slipped out of her hand and fluttered over the carpet. There they lay--the arias, the recitations, the duets, and the connecting orchestral passages--all in confusion, and on the top the "Turtle Dove" solo for the clarionet, which she had hummed with her mother almost before she could lisp. Dismayed, she gazed at the scattered sheets. They had turned yellow and musty. Several were stained with her own blood, which had flown from her veins after her mother's assault on her with the bread-knife. The bloodstains entirely obliterated many of the notes. Others had been gnawed away with the paper by mice at Schloss Lischnitz. And this was what it had come to, her "Song of Songs."
It held out no message of hope now; it was no refuge for the future. No faithful Eckart, no guide to dizzy golden heights. It was a mere derelict, used up though never used, a time-honoured bit of lumber that one drags about without knowing why--an extinguished light, a masterpiece of wisdom that had become meaningless.
Shrugging her shoulders, she hastily gathered together the disarranged rolls of paper and tried to thrust one inside the other, regardless of how they came--she was in such a hurry!
"I can arrange them some time later," she thought, dimly conscious that she would never take the trouble.
Adele came with the box. She seemed to have been a remarkably long time getting it. Her eyes kept wandering guiltily to the clock, and her answers were absent-minded. Then she threw back the lid, and Lilly threw the score into the bottom of the box. Its yawning depths seemed to cry out for further booty. There lay the dresses spread out on the bed. Her row of shoes stood by the washstand. Hats, blouses, veils, lace wraps, silk petticoats--all were waiting as much as to say, "Take us too!"
For a moment she closed her eyes with a moan, remembering the one and only sacrifice he had asked of her. But it must be done--both their futures depended on it.
"Frau Laue will hide them for me, and afterwards Frau Laue can keep them," she thought.
Then, with a rapid resolve, she made a dash at the clothes, and gathered up blindly anything and everything she could lay hands on. She seized even the gold-coroneted ivory brushes, the three-winged hand-mirror, the bromide, the recipe for the summer storage of her furs, and a dozen other little indispensable articles of the toilette.
And jewels were not forgotten! "He may want money later," she thought.
Meanwhile Adele had been sent out for a four-wheeler, and again it was ages before she came back. The porter helped to carry down the trunk, and Adele held the hat-boxes in her free hand. One last caress of the bullfinch's grey-green wings, a kiss on the small monkey's velvety snout, and the door closed behind her for ever.
"Will not the gnädige Frau leave an address?" Adele inquired. How sly she looked!
"Later on I will write to you, dear Adele, and I hope you may come and live with me again."
"Dear Adele" did not respond, but glanced down the street expectantly.
A few minutes afterwards, as Lilly drove along the canal, she saw from the cab window a smart yellow-striped hired motor whiz past from the opposite direction. Richard was inside. She recognised him as he flashed by. Red as a lobster, his head slanting, he stared past her, with wild and searching glances, at the house that she had just left.
She hurriedly directed her driver to turn into a side street, for she had no desire to meet him till her fate with regard to the world had been decided. But in a few minutes she heard, with a beating heart, the same clatter of wheels that had died away in the distance coming behind her, and drawing nearer and nearer. The yellow side of the motor had almost shot beyond her, when the word "Stop!" brought it to a standstill, and at the same moment her cab drew up too.
Richard confronted her with his hand on the door-handle: "Where are you going?"
His voice rose to a feminine shrillness. Above his high starched collar his throat worked up and down convulsively.
She felt perfectly calm and mistress of the situation.
He appeared to her now a poor, helpless shadow of a creature, he who so long had been her lord and master.
"Please let me drive on, Richard," she said. "I have said good-bye to you by letter. I wanted a few things, and have been to fetch them. Why should we annoy each other further?"
"Turn round!" he said, grinding his teeth. "Turn round!"
"Why should I turn round?"
"I say you shall! You know where your home is. I will not allow you to knock about the world by yourself any longer, God knows what mayn't happen to you. Driver, turn round!"
The driver, with his red face, looked inquiringly at his fare before obeying.
"Really, Richard, I alone have the control of this cab, and of my future proceedings--as you have control of yours."
"What rot! If you are thinking about the American heiress, she may go to the deuce for all I care. But you--you must come back. You must! you shall!"
He grasped with both hands the hem of her skirt as if he would drag her out of the cab by her clothes.
"I beg you to come back.... I can't sleep, I can't work.... I have got so used to you.... If it had come off, I should have joined you again directly the wedding was over. And everything in your rooms is as you left it that you have seen for yourself. Peterle won't eat, Adele says, and Adele is moped. She says she simply can't exist without you. I'll give you twenty thousand--no, thirty thousand--marks a year for life. Mother won't mind.... She understands ... for, you know, I've given up the idea of marrying for good; that need never worry you again.... And you may come to the office when you like.... And you shall have the carriage instead of a hired one. I'll have the telephone put on between your flat and the stable. Or perhaps you'd prefer a motor-car? If so, you shall have one, ten thousand times better than this."
He had played his trump-card. What dreams of earthly grandeur could exceed a motor-car? He paused and, kneeling on the step, stared hard into her face to see the effect of his speech.
She saw clearly that she would never be free of him unless she told him the truth. She was sorry for him, but it was her duty.
"Look here, Richard. All that you offer me is no good to me now, for I love another man who can give me far more than you can--far, far more!"
"What! What! You've caught a young Vanderbilt?" he exclaimed in jealous rage. "Well, I must say I never suspected that side to your character."
"No, dear Richard; it's not a young Vanderbilt. On the contrary, he is so poor that he lives from hand to mouth. But, all the same, he and I are engaged, and as his future wife I must ask you to leave me free to do as I like."
His jaw dropped, his eyes grew round; he reeled back against the hind wheel of the yellow car.
"Drive on!" called Lilly to the cabman.
She leaned back in her corner with a sigh of relief, and yet with a slight sense of guilt at having got rid so lightly of the old love.
The whole way she heard the puffing of a slowly progressing motor behind her, and when she descended from the cab, Richard got out of his motor at a little distance, but near enough for her to see an expression in his eyes like that of a whipped dog.
She ran up the four flights of stairs as if pursued by furies, forgetting all about her box. A moment afterwards the cabman came up, panting under its weight, and when she offered him his fare he declined to take the money.
"The gentleman downstairs," he said, "has already settled everything."